Neighborhood Brats – Claw Marks (Dirt Cult Records, 2018)

First of all, many apologies to Chris at Dirt Cult and to Neighborhood Brats that this has taken so long. Sometimes real life gets in the way of typing up these reviews! Doing grown up stuff often sucks.

Anyway, Neighborhood Brats are a 4 piece combo from Oakland / Long Beach, California. They are formed around a core of vocalist Jenny Angelillo and guitarist George Rager, and rounded out by what I believe are “occasional members”. They’ve been around since 2010 and have a wealth of material that you can check out on their bandcamp page, Claw Marks being their second full length effort.

Chris at Dirt Cult described these guys as playing Killed By Death style punk (find out more about Killed by Death or KBD here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killed_by_Death_(albums) ) meets the Avengers, the Clash, and X. To me, this record reminds me of an amped version of some of those bigger names in the Riot Grrl movement of the early 1990s (like Bikini Kill, Huggy Bear and Brat Mobile) meets Milo Goes To College era Descendents. Whichever description floats your boat, I feel like folks are gonna find a great deal to enjoy here, although Chris at Dirt Cult probably has the more insightful and factually correct one!

Either way, these are an awesome 11 cuts of scrappy female fronted punk rock, that you can check out on the bandcamp player below. Tony of Nurgle rating: 9/10

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Tony of Nurgle is a true child of the North, currently living in exile in Croydon, South East London. He used to co-run a specialist record store in Manchester (Roadkill Records), and also spent a couple of years as a promoter, and put on shows for the likes of Leatherface, the Loved Ones, Lucero, Minus The Bear, These Arms Are Snakes, Spy vs Spy, Latterman etc. He also spent several years DJing at shady rock clubs in Manchester, and started the infamous Thursday night "punk room" at Jilly's Rockworld. Also responsible for Middle Finger Response, and collaborated with a couple of friends on a monthly night called Refuse to Lose, which will still occasionally reunite the original DJ line-up - hopefully in the not too distant future.
Apart from that, it's all bitterness and a jaundiced view of human nature, rarely skateboarding, often reading books with maps in the front.